Film

April 25, 2010

Hollywood still doesn't dare make a mainstream film to mock Islamist terrorists, though as we've seen the British have recently come out with two: The Infidel and Four Lions.

Now from India comes Tere Bin Laden, about a young Pakistani TV journalist who wants to move to the USA to live the American dream. But he's foiled because homeland security won't allow him to get a visa. So he stumbles across a Bin Laden lookalike and makes a fake terrorist video . . . wait, the joke's on us. . . .

Starring Pakistani artist Ali Zafar, who we saw on this blog a few years ago as one of the performers in the Urdu pop video against Islamist extremism, Yeh Hum Naheen (This Is Not Us).

February 14, 2010

Here's a first look at the upcoming British film that makes fun of home-grown jihadist terrorists. The Four Lions, which I wrote about last month, premiered a few weeks ago at the Sundance Film Festival. Writer-director Chris Morris brilliantly researched Islamist extremism and discovered a lot to laugh at. He's bringing it to us in his comedy. Take a look at the dark, quiet humor in this short clip.

Only terrorist fronts like CAIR and Muslim Brotherhood fronts like ISNA would call it anti-Islamic, as the movie parodies extremism, and not Islam. But then, to CAIR and ISNA, both are one and the same.

February 10, 2010

Here's the trailer to David Baddiel's upcoming comedy The Infidel, discussed on this page a few weeks ago. The movie is about a British Muslim with Islamist fundamentalist relatives who discovers he was adopted after being born to Jewish parents.

January 16, 2010

It's way past time for us to stop being terrorized by Islamist terrorists. The best way to defeat them is to laugh at them while our troops and Predators hunt them down.

With the politically incorrect exceptions of Team America, brought to us from the folks at South Park, David Zucker's An American Carol and one or two others, Hollywood has been slow to help the world laugh at Islamist terrorists. Even then, "Team America" was really making fun of the whole war on terror itself, and "An American Carol" targeted American left-wing moonbats and political correctness in general.

Across the pond, British filmmakers are doing what should have been done long ago. They have set their sights on Islamist extremists specifically, and submitted them to a merciless lampooning.

"Four Lions," a comedy about jihad, premieres January 23 at the Sundance Film Festival. The film mocks British-born Islamic terrorists. Chris Morris, the evil genius behind the UK's Channel 4 satire "Brass Eye," wrote the movie.

Here's a wonderful synopsis of "Four Lions" from a sneak preview, showing that Morris really gets it. See for yourself:

In three years of research, Chris Morris has spoken to
terrorism experts, imams, police, secret services and hundreds of
Muslims. Even those who have trained and fought jihad report the
frequency of farce. At training camps young jihadis argue about honey,
cry for their mums, shoot each other's feet off, chase snakes and get
thrown out for smoking. A minute into his martyrdom video, a would-be
bomber looks puzzled and says "what was the question again?" On
millennium eve, five jihadis set out to ram a US warship. They slipped
their boat into the water and carefully stacked it with explosives. It
sank.

Terrorist cells have the same group dynamics as stag parties
and five a side football teams. There is conflict, friendship,
misunderstanding and rivalry. Terrorism is about ideology, but it's
also about berks [idiots].

Four Lions is a funny, thrilling fictional story that
illuminates modern British jihad with an insight beyond anything else
in our culture. It plunges us beyond seeing these young men as
unfathomably alien. It undermines the folly of just wishing them away
or alienating the entire culture from which they emerge. It understands
how terrorism relates to testosterone. It understands jihadis as human
beings. And it understands human beings as innately ridiculous. As
Spinal Tap understood heavy metal and Dr Strangelove the Cold War, Four
Lions understands modern British jihadis.

There's plenty of weird comic material in the terrorists' own reality. Think of the deranged wank-a-thon stuff our troops have captured on suicide bombers' computer drives. Or Osama bin Laden's instructions about how to go to the bathroom the Wahhabi way, Or al Qaeda's new butt bomb technology. Or the donkey videos from a Predator gun camera. Then on Christmas we saw the Keystone Kops antics of the Nigerian pantybomber. He couldn't blow up an airplane full of people over Detroit, but he did manage to burn off his testicles. Terrorism relates to testosterone.

These losers are a ripe target for being cut down to size with exposure and mockery. Their pride-filled, shame-laden culture will do them in if we simply exploit the opportunities.

Luckily, some British comedians have done it for us. Even if not always in good taste. I haven't seen these films yet and am not endorsing their content - I'm simply advocating the idea that we should be mocking the terrorists and their extremist allies, and praising those who give it a try.

The second British jihad comedy, called "The Infidel," is coming out in April. Comedian David Baddiel wrote the movie about what the Sunday Times of London describes as revolving around "a Muslim family man, played by Omid Djalili, the comedian, who suffers an identity crisis when he finds out that he was adopted after being born to Jewish parents." (The above images on this posting are from the film.)

"Much of the humor stems from his strained dealings with a bigoted fundamentalist relative called Arshad al-Masri who becomes the film's 'cartoon villain,'" according to The Times. "In one scene, Djalili's character refers to him as 'Arshad al-f****** Stalin,' while his four year-old daughter interrupts dinner in another scene by shouting: 'We are all members of Hezbollah now.'"

"I think this whole area is one that has been left barren comically because people are frightened of giving offense," Baddiel tells The Times. "They are frightened about talking about Islam, about religion and about offending people. My instinct is, if something is not being talked about, then I want to examine it."

There's also a live performance playing in London - Jihad! The Musical - that rips the Islamist wackos a new one as well. "Terrorism is bullying on an international scale," the writers tell the Daily Telegraph. "We’re
mocking these crazies with the tools we have. Others have different means of
tackling terrorism."

A former United Nations advisor (whatever that is) is quoted in the Telegraph as saying that the comedians "are doing more than anything the Government is doing in
counter-terrorism. A lot of what these terrorists say and claim to believe
is actually pathetic and juvenile. It has to be exposed and comedians are
the best people at doing this."

PS: I devote a whole chapter to the idea of ridiculing terrorists in my 2007 monograph, Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War. A lot of people in the US and British militaries and secret services read it and, I'm told, borrowed ideas from it. Pick up a copy today on Amazon.com.

Bottom photo from "Team America: World Police" (2004) (Hat tip on the British movies to LC)